District Ten's Tanner Hart's POV
"What are we going to tell Victory?" Adrian asked, trying to sound calm, but I could tell that he was worried by the slight difference in tone he was using. "Selene escaped and we let her go. We were supposed to be watching her, but she slipped through our fingers."
"Its because you were being a jackass and attacked me!" I told him, even though it was my fault because I was the one that got mad at him and caused this whole thing to happen. If I hadn't gotten mad at him and attacked him with the spike, he might have seen Selene escape.
"Because you attacked me first," Adrian spat back. "I was just defending myself." Yes you were, and I'm sorry for attacking you.
"Well you should have just let me stab you and we'd have called it even." I told him.
"There's nothing equal about that," He replied. "Just count yourself lucky that you choose the right hallway and we found her."
It's tracking. It wasn't hard to track her, all I needed to look for was foot prints in the dirty, dusty floor and find areas that were either cleaner then they should have been, or something that had a foot mark on them. And not only that, but her socks sometimes slipped on the grime that was left on the floor, leaving a small trail of a mud-like substance.
"And let the dyke get away with that other skank," I said, remembering the other girl that was defending her, the girl that Adrian seemed to hate with a passion. "We should have fought them, we could have taken them." I was strong, you were strong. I was good at fighting, you were good at fighting. We could have done some serious damage to them. "My mentor, old bat Josie, said that if there's a chance to eliminate the competition, take it."
"Joise Flanner? The one that sent her ally into a one way suicide fight to weaken a group of enemies before she finished off said weakened enemies after her ally died," Adrian said with annoyance and disgust rather than asked. "That woman is an idiot. She's too competitive. If the games would allow cannibalism of babies, she'd eat them in a second if she thought that it would improve her odds of winning."
"Wouldn't that help her?" I asked, thinking of how the baby would feed her and she wouldn't have to go looking for food and get hungry. "It's food!"
"I really hope you're joking, Tanner," Adrian growled. "Because that woman has no morals. I bet she told you to win like she did, by being brutal and efficient. And that means by using everyone to your advantage and being stupid and competitive, just like what you would have done if I hadn't told you to back off from fighting Selene, Caritta, Kendrick, and Caia."
"We could have taken them." I told them. As I said before, we were good at fighting. There'd be less competition and less people to worry about.
"No, we couldn't have," He told me angrily. "Now shut up and let me think about what we're going to tell Victory and the rest when they find Selene missing."
Adrian then began talking to himself, muttering things and trying to come up with a plan. He tried to stay calm, but as time dragged on and he got more and more anxious as he couldn't come up with a plan. He then became increasingly frustrated and worried about what Victory and Dylan would say to us.
Jen was a good person, she was fun and understanding and was a nice girl. She got me into this alliance, and she could be made fun of without getting insulted, unlike Dylan. Jeremiah was the same as Jen, he was fun to be around with. And while Dylan couldn't take a joke sometimes, he was still an alright person, but Victory was just plain mean who used every chance she could get to hit you.
In fact, if we don't tell her a good excuse, she'll probably kill us for letting the traitoring bitch escape.
As we got back to the cornucopia, I hoped that they weren't back yet, and sure enough, they weren't. That was a good sign. Now it was only a matter of time before they did come back. "We're dead if we don't think of anything." Adrian said as he walked up to the cornucopia. "Tanner, help me think of something."
I then grabbed the back of Adrian's head, pulled his face back, then slammed it as hard as I could on the hard surface of the rusted cornucopia before hearing a wet crunch. Adrian yelled in pain before I pulled his head back again, and slammed his face into the rusted giant horn a second time.
A small, flower like pattern of blood appeared on the rusted surface before I dragged his face across the metal, leaving a trail of red behind before I slammed his head onto the ground and kicked him in the mouth. A thin line of saliva and blood came out of his mouth.
"Stand up asshole." I demanded before I picked him up myself and started to slap him across the face multiple times. "You're worthless, you sack of piss. You fucking homo. I bet you're freaking out because your're wondering how to ask Dylan to fuck you up the ass!"
"Fuck you and your ugly ass pubic haired face!" Ow, that hurt. I wasn't that ugly, was I? "I don't think you understand how bad this situation really is!"
"How bad what is?" A female voice called out worryingly.
We both turned at the same time to see Jen running towards us, with Victory and Dylan making their way a fair distance behind her.
Where was Jeremiah? He must be behind Victory and Dylan some place. He'll show up.
I saw that Jen had a kind of worried look on her face. Even though she was smiling, the smile had dropped somewhat and she looked concerned about us.
"Selene isn't here!" I shouted to Jen before Adrian could even say a word. "I was talking to Adrian, then the next thing I know, my face started to hurt and I woke up on the ground with Adrian unconscious next to me."
I heard a little gasp of surprise come from Adrian. It was so quiet that the only possible people that could have heard it was me and Jen, but Jen didn't give any indication that she heard Adrian's little surprise gasp.
"Selene." Jen growled angrily as the features on her face grew darker. "Selene!"
I was taken aback by Jen's sudden change in attitude. She was normally the calm and happy one, but now she seemed to be just like the rest of the careers save Jeremiah and Jen's district partner. But I'm guessing that they would have both put on facial features like this if given the chance. "How dare she hurt you two! Especially you Tanner, it looks like she beat you over the head with a club or something." I didn't look over to Adrian, knowing that it might give away what really happened. "How dare she betray our trust and hurt our allies. I'll show her what happens to someone that hurts someone close to me."
I'm close to you Jen? Does that mean we can be friends? Are we friends? I felt a rise of hope and warmth come from inside me.
"Wouldn't it have been better for Selene if she just killed you both instead of knocking you out?"
I didn't know what to say to that, because Dylan was right, it would of just been better for Selene if she just killed us. If we were really unguarded and taken in for a surprise attack, her best course of action would to kill us, that way we wouldn't be a problem anymore. But they couldn't know the truth that Adrian and I were really fighting and Selene used that opportunity to slip by.
I couldn't think of anything good to say, so I just said the first thing that came to my mind as I turned towards Dylan.
"She's a fucking cunt licker!" I shouted, letting the words escape my mouth without even thinking, hoping for the best. "Cunt lickers are too girly to do anything tough!"
I turned back to Jen, and hoped that she wasn't insulted by anything that I heard myself say.
She wasn't. In fact, she still looked a little mad about our incident.
Dylan looked unimpressed while Victory looked like she wanted to hit us. No surprise there.
"Where's Jeremiah?" I asked, wondering where he was.
"Dead." Dylan told us, looking at Victory without turning his head away from us. "Killed in a way that wasn't very far from what almost happened to you two."
What? Jeremiah's dead? How and when did that happen? And the way he was looking at Victory , was he trying to tell us that Victory was reasonable? Victory couldn't have done it without him or Jen seeing it though, right?
"Victory didn't kill him," Jen said, irritated at the subject. "She wouldn't do that, we're allies, and what use would it have been?"
Dylan looked irritated as he looked at Jen before explaining.
"Certitude? Trust?" Dylan then walked over to Jen and pulled Adrian and I close in, leaving Victory out of the decision as he talked quietly. "Get it through your thick skull Jen, Victory and Selene bamboozled us. I'm sick of you taking Victory's side. She killed Jeremiah, end of story. She doesn't care that we're allies."
"What the fuck does bamboozled mean?" I asked, wondering what the hell that word meant.
"It means fooled." Dylan said acidly. "And that's what Victory's done to Jen. We've got to get rid of her."
"No." Jen retorted. "We're not getting rid of Victory. Something may have happened to Jeremiah but Victory had nothing to do with it."
"I think you might just want to get rid of Victory because you don't like her." Adrian called out calmly, looking at Dylan suspiciously. "How do you even know she really did anything?"
He had a point. "And we need Victory, it would make us weaker if we got rid of her." Another good point. Without Victory, we'd have one less person on our side, and we had already lost two. Now there was only five of us and about ten more tributes than us. Was ten right? I wished that I was better at counting. Five...Six...Seven...Whatever. There was more of them then there were of us.
"Typhlotic!" Dylan shouted angrily in our faces. "All of you!"
"What the fuck is a typhlotic?" I asked, wondering it was. Damn Dylan and his words, he made me feel stupider then I already was. I hated that I was stupid. I sometimes wish that I could have gone to school, then maybe I could interact better with other kids and not have to rely on other people.
"It's not an insult if nobody understands it, dumbass." Adrian told Dylan. Jen tried to hold in a laugh, and only half succeeded.
"Are you insulting my intelligence?" Dylan asked with a lot of force and anger behind his voice. "Because I'm smarter then all you cretins."
"That's not saying much." I said, even though I didn't even know what a cretin was. But it felt good that I got Jen to start laughing again. Even if I didn't understand why.
"Hey man," Adrian said with mild annoyance on his face. "I take offense to that, even if I don't know what a cretin is."
"You people are impossible!" Dylan exploded before he turned around and pulled out one of his weird knives. The one he pulled out was a small hollow pipe that had been sharpened on one end. "If you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself!"
"Don't!" I shouted before jumping onto Dylan's throwing arm and grabbing the homemade knife, preventing him from throwing it. I couldn't let him kill Victory in a flash of rage. I didn't know who was right, Dylan or Jen, but I couldn't just let him murder Victory like that.
"Get off me!" Dylan snarled before I saw Jen and Adrian jump on him as well. With our combined weight, even someone like Dylan couldn't move very well. "You people have no idea what kind of savage demon you're dealing with!"
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jen pull out one of her knives at the same time Dylan grabbed Adrian's lower lip with his free left hand and pulled on it as hard as he could.
I watched in horror as Adrian's lower lip began to stretch before the flesh on his chin started to tear off, leaving a bloody flow blood start to run before the flesh on his chin left his face.
Adrian screamed in pain at the same time Dylan did, telling me that Jen had started to stab him.
I heard someone fall to the ground, and I knew that it was Adrian as he continued to shout in pain. And now that he was off Dylan, the weight on him was lighter, getting him a chance to fight back.
I then felt myself get swung around before I felt my back hit something hard before I felt myself get thrown to the ground.
I was dazed for a second and the pain was strong, but I was tough and could handle pain. I got up as quickly as I could before seeing Dylan holding Jen hostage. His homemade knife against her throat. I didn't know what to do. I stood there in shock as Jen bit Dylan in the thumb before ripping out his flesh, sending a thin spay of blood to squirt out of his hand and spray Jen in the face.
But then Dylan's crude knife cut into Jen's throat and she started to bleed from her neck.
"No!" I shouted before I pulled out the railway spike from my backpack and was about to stab him with it, but he was already running away with Victory right behind him.
Even though I wanted to chase Dylan and kill him for what he did to Jen and Adrian, my first thoughts were of them, so I ran over to Jen and placed my hand on her throat to try and stop the bleeding. "Jen. Adrian." I cried. "Your both weak assholes if you die from some scratches."
I hoped that they didn't die. If they died, I'd be left alone with Victory, and I don't think Victory likes me very much. I needed them to stay alive, I didn't want to be here alone.
District Five's Alexa "Fortune" Langer's POV
The backpack that I took from Vida Harkle turned out to be completely useless. All it contained was a bunch of loose paper along with a cube with different colours on each side of it. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that it was meant to be played with and wasn't used to kill people. I discarded the backpack full of useless things in disgust. I had risked my life for that damn backpack, and it turned out to be full of useless items. There wasn't any drugs in it, or anything.
Guess that's what you get when you take a gamble, you either win big or lose big, just like what happens when I go into that illegal gambling den back home. Dad brought me there when I was eight, the people there don't give a shit about how old you are if you're willing to spend money there.
We gambled there for almost three hours, winning and losing dice games, fights, and my personal favorite, card games. I simply loved the card games because of the strategies that the other games didn't allow you to do. With the dice games it came down to simple luck, with the fights it came down to the fighter's luck if he wasn't out matched. Cards on the other hand, while they did have luck on it, you could fool the other card carriers into believing that you had a good hand when in reality it was a piece of shit hand.
My father taught me everything he knew about gambling, and on that day, I managed to win a fair bit of money. It wasn't a lot of money, not enough for us to upgrade our social status or even get a new house, but for us, it was a lot of money, and we needed it. To us, it was a fortune, small, but a fortune never the less.
From then on, I was called fortune by my dad, and soon, it caught on to most of my family as well. Mom called me fortune as well, but my brother, Phelan, didn't. In fact, he hated my nick name. I could tell that he was jealous of it and got irritated when mom and dad used the nick name. But he was always like that, always complaining about something and saying that something wasn't fair or something and telling us that we were assholes. He was ungrateful for everything.
Then when he was eighteen, he got reaped for the games and won by burning the career camp, with the careers still in it, in the middle of the night. But not before stealing supplies for himself. In addition to that, he also had a habit of stabbing any tribute he found while they were sleeping. He was nothing but a coward, a coward that knew what he was doing and a coward that won by killing six tributes, three of which were careers.
With the careers at only half power and with no supplies, they quickly fell to the non-careers due to not being used to hunger.
In the end, my brother won by killing the second place tribute in his sleep. He stabbed him so many times in the back of the neck that he nearly decapitated him.
My brother the coward, never looked so scary with all that blood on him along with his snarling face that looked like it was pure rage. If it weren't for the little signs, I would of sworn that he was just like a psychotic career, but I could tell that he was still one of us. He didn't enjoy it.
But when he came home, he was exactly the same person that he was before, a fucking douche bag. He had won a real fortune, and all he did was rub it in our face before moving out of the house and lived in the victor village by himself, not sharing any of the money with us and leaving us to suffer.
He was exactly the same, the only difference was the hardness in his eyes, as well as being rich.
Then when our house got burnt down in an accident, with me being the only survivor, all he did was accuse me of burning our house down. I could tell that he believed what he said, and that enraged me, why would I burn our house down and kill our mom and dad? I asked him that a second before I told him my opinion. That he burned down our house and tried to kill all three of us. It made sense, he hated us all for some reason, and now that he was a victor and not living with us anymore, he could do it, because he had the victor money to live off of and a house to live in.
I shouted what I thought at him, trying to make him confess, but all it did was earn me a slap across the face. A strong slap at that, my brother was strong, stronger then I ever realized. I shocked me, but what really hurt was that he actually hit me. Sure he had threatened to do it, even threaten to kill me, but I never thought that he'd really do it.
Then before I knew it, he threw me to the ground before beating me up until I had blood running out of my mouth in multiple thick lines and my body ached everywhere. And if that wasn't enough, he continued to accuse me of burning the house down, blaming me for our parent's death, saying that this was a way to extract money from him.
He explained how it was my plan to make him feel guilty and have him hand over money to him, which just wasn't true. It hurt me to think that he could even think that. Those words hurt more then his punches and kicks did.
He shouted at me to get out of his sight before he got the peacekeepers to execute me. He also threatened to kill me himself if I ever showed my face at his victor home or came into the victor village without being a proper victor.
I couldn't move, so he left me in the middle of the street with my injures.
I was abandoned. I had nobody left except myself.
I think I started to use drugs the next day, take away the pain of having no family anymore and how I was alone in the world. Those three guys living outside the district, teasers as much as they were, were good company. They made me feel as if I wasn't completely alone. Maybe that's why I held on for so long.
And now that I look back on the day my jackass brother accused me of burning the house down, when I was just fortunate enough to escape, I had no burn marks on me. I had somehow escaped unharmed. No wonder he had accused me of burning the house down.
He suddenly became less of a douche bag, but was still one never the less, just more understandable, for that one incident.
I then started to feel myself laugh. I laughed at this whole situation. Those fucking careers were going to kill us because of their illegal training and the Capitol sponsors were kissing their asses, sending in supplies for them to live because they thought they were better than the rest of us, because nobody wants to sponsor a loser.
The reapings were rigged to reap anyone the Capitol didn't like. This year though, was more obvious then the other years, because they wanted to get rid of more then one person they didn't like, they wanted to get rid of many. And if I hadn't gotten gassed or volunteered, I bet they'd reap my name because of my brother winning. He wasn't exactly a Capitol favorite when he won.
These games were always rigged. I hated it. I probably wasn't going to win, but my brother defied the odds and beat a rigged game. If he could do that, I could do it as well.
I continued to laugh at those thoughts of rebellion and how everything was illegal, but nobody seemed to care as long as it benefited them.
My face started to itch, so I began to scratch it, feeling that it was something beneath my skin, I began to scratch harder, hoping that I could get it.
District Ten's Perla Freuff's POV
This wasn't how it was supposed to go! I was supposed to kill that kid before eating him. It was supposed to be simple, but then that girl had to ruin everything by getting involved and having that stupid kid fight back. And even though I could fight, they could fight as well. I was overwhelmed by them.
It wasn't right, I was supposed to be the one overwhelming them. How could this have happened? How could I be so powerless?
I searched my memories and could only see times when I was the one beating up other people, even when I was a little girl. And even when I wasn't beating up people or killing them, I was the one clearly in charge of the situation. Even the adults didn't get on my bad side.
I would deal the drugs that my dad supplied me with and get them to hand over the money somehow. Usually by threatening them, just like how my dad taught me to do.
It made good money, but most of it was spent on the cheaper drugs we bought from other dealers. Either that or we just stole the drugs and used them all up, not leaving our house for days on end until we needed more.
Being on drugs was good, it relaxed us and kept us from thinking beyond anything over a minute in advance. It stopped my father from beating me, it made me stop thinking about how poor we were, it also stopped me from thinking about mom's death.
But now that I had been off the drugs for several agonizing days, I couldn't help but remember the way I had found her when she died. I went to the kitchen and found that she had jammed a knife through her right eye. It was a big and sharp knife, so it entered through her eye and exited through the back of her skull, the smooth metal soaked in blood.
As I ran down the hallway, I caught a gimps of writing on the wall that looked like it had been written with blood. It read: our lives are fucked up. I couldn't agree more.
I was having visions of my dead mother in front of me, there were bugs under my skin that didn't seem to go away, no matter how many of them I picked out, and I wasn't on any drugs. All of this was came back to my so called friends taking them away from me at the justice building. Those bastards had doomed me. If I had my drugs I could have beaten those two to a pulp no problem.
Dad and Sonny always told me that drugs were good and that they benefited us. It was true, they made us money and they helped me deal with my problems and made me better. But now I didn't have them and my whole life was fucked up.
I was supposed to be the ones beating up and killing people in the arena, not the other way around. It wasn't supposed to be like this. This felt so wrong. They were supposed to fear me and let me kill them. They were supposed to be weak and helpless, just like my other victims.
I continued to run away from the two District Twelve tributes who made my face feel as if it had been flattened and put on fire. It was so painful.
I continued to run around the corners, but I could still hear the duo running after me, but they were getting further and further away from me. Good, I didn't want to die from them. In fact, I didn't want to die at all.
I wanted to go back home and continue drug dealing and buying drugs from Sonny. And after I buy some of the heavenly narcotics from my friend, I'll go over to my fake friends and kill them for the hell they put me through.
They made the last week of my life a living hell without my drugs, and it made me into a wimp. I got thrown into a wall by my district partner, I got beat up by a couple of District Twelve retards, and I was seeing bad memories that I wanted buried forever.
Why did I ever feel sorry for those mothers that lost their kids? Their suffering was nothing compared to mine. They could go and get depressed and commit suicide like my mother did. I don't care anymore. They can rejoin their kids in hell.
I continued to run until I reached another room weakly filled with red light.
I couldn't see much due to the dim lights, but from the tiny little tables, the plastic tea set, playing blocks with letters on all sides, the ruined posters of reading and learning and caring, the stuffed animals all covered with dust and dirt and mold, I thought it looked a lot like a place where little kids would play. A kid's room.
I ran into the room and looked to see if there was someplace that I could hide from the tributes chasing me, because I knew that I couldn't run forever. I was already huffing heavily while that District Twelve girl was still going strong. I was faster than her, but she looked like she could run longer.
I didn't see anything to hide in or behind. There were cubbies that were out in the open, tables that wouldn't hide me unless my opponent was blind, and bookshelves that were useless for hiding as well.
But then I saw an air vent in the top right corner of the room. It looked big enough for me to crawl into, and nobody would ever think about looking inside the air vent, especially those two retards.
Smiling to myself for my cleverness, I ran to the vent and ripped it off the wall before crawling in. The vent was heavy with stale air and the smell of rotten food, but I only needed to stay in it as long as the District Twelve duo was in the room.
I fit my entire body into the ventilation before I rotated my entire body around, grabbed the vent cover, and placed it back where it belonged.
I continued to smile to myself thinking about how smart I was before I felt something grab my legs and start snarling.
I felt a wave of fear erupt in my body before I screamed out in fright and crawled out of the air vent as fast as I could. I kicked at the thing holding my leg and hopped that it wasn't going to do anything to me.
I turned around to see that it was a child that looked about four years old with about half it's filthy blond hair ripped from it's head with open sores, deep, pus covered cuts, yellow eyes with red spider webs surrounding it. The scariest part was that the child was smiling, looking at me like I was a meal ticket.
I kicked it off my leg before I started to hear ratting come from the ceiling and other parts of the walls.
Then all the ventilation shafts seemed to open, and out crawled out more of the hungry, demonic children.
I never felt such fear in my life.
District Twelve's Daria "Dare" Nettle's POV
If it weren't for Zeal I wouldn't have lost that girl. Now with all the different hallways to take, I wasn't sure which way she had gone. Damn it! I hated this! She could be back at anytime.
I felt myself growling in frustration, angry at Zeal for slowing me down and not letting me go after her immediately. But as I looked at these tight hallways, I was glad that Zeal was beside me to make me feel more secure then I had been after I had made off with the bow, arrows, and the small knife that I had picked up.
I felt a moment of shame hit me as I remembered the knife that I had picked up near the cornucopia before I ran into Malik. That pocket knife would of killed Perla if I had used it on her instead of using my fist to pound her face in a single time. Damn it Daria, why can't you be smarter?
I hit myself in the head for being stupid before I heard a high pitched scream come from the hall on my left.
"That's her!" Zeal shouted before I started to run in that direction with Zeal right behind me.
I was feeling better now, she must of tripped and scrapped her peeling off face or something. What luck.
I followed the screams, hearing the purple and black haired girl with red eyed contacts in pain made me wonder if she ran into another tribute. If so, I'd kill them as well and there'd be less competition for us to deal with.
I ran to the room, and saw a horrifying sight that made me stop dead in my tracks, making Zeal bump into me, but I hardly felt it as I looked at the center of the room.
In the badly lit room, I saw a group of children. A group of children around four to six years of age with tattered clothes that reveled open sores on their deathly pale or light brown or black coloured skin as well as deep cuts that didn't bleed and other injuries on their bodies that included hair that was ripped out of their scalp, just like what Perla did just minutes ago with us.
The children were gathered around in a circle around Perla, who had a giant, bloody hole that looked like it stretched from her neck to her crotch area. The kids were pulling out bloody chunks of flesh from her body and began to eat it. Some of the bigger kids were fighting over organs that still seemed to still be working. Another group of kids were munching on her lungs like a turkey leg, ripping pieces of raw, bloody meat off the ribs. The three biggest kids were grappling each other for her still beating heart.
On the wall above them read: we all fall down.
The bloody mess that was Perla, and the fact that these kids, however muttish they were, were eating her, was too much for me. I felt my stomach start to send up warm acid as tear built up in my eyes before I felt myself vomiting up last night's food.
This isn't real. The killings, the deaths, everything that involves death in the arena isn't real. I told myself that, I had told that to myself for the seventeen years I've been alive, but I knew that that wasn't true. The death in front of me was real. And while I had been planning on killing her, I didn't want to see this.
I hated that I even thought of killing another person. If I had killed her, I would have made her just that. Dead.
I looked up just in time to see several yellow eyed kids with red spider webs in the whites of their eyes looking straight at me with an expression that I could only describe as hungry.
"Run brown hair girl!" Zeal shouted at me in fright.
He didn't need to tell me twice.
Thanks to Brocasica for betaing this.
Well, as far as this goes, I think that was a good chapter.
Huh, I might be in the business for creating gory deaths. Am I sadisfied with Perla's death? Not entirly. I mean, I think I could of described it in a worse way, but this is good. I guess. I also planned on giving her more back story, but, what happens happens. Plans change.